1. Introduction
Land atmosphere coupling in weather and climate is important but inherent challenging and complex [
1,
2]. The soil moisture (SM) as one of the key factors in land atmosphere coupling is especially evidential for affecting rainfall during both model [
3] and observational [
4] studies. And these evidences have been concluded through various typical ways (or feedback chains) but with broad uncertainties because of coupling advantages and/or deficits [
5]. Therefore, quantifying these varied land-atmosphere coupling characteristics during local typical rainstorms can be of great significance for enhancing the insights into local typical feedback chains.
As indicated by well documented global observation network, early studies have shown that rainfall has been highly coupled with SM in many “hot spot” (or typical) regions [
6], where local morning SM can significantly affect afternoon convection [
7]. That coupling evidence has highlighted the relation chain base of the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX), which promotes the completely interpreted relations among land surface, planetary boundary layer (PBL) (e.g., clouds or convection), and rainfall. However, under the background of shifted local surface caused by global warming [
8], these rainfall-related couplings have been found to be complexly intersected with various local characteristics such as soil moisture gradient [
9], and soil thickness [
10]. Nevertheless, many model-relative studies have shown that typical regional couplings can be both negative and positive, indicated by the complexly intersected characteristics among soil moisture, land cover, land surface model (LSM), resolved scale of coupling model, and so on [
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16]. Generally, these complex local land atmosphere couplings (LoCo) have been characterized by immeasurable uncertainties in observations or model deficits to some extent.
In order to quantify various typical LoCo characteristics rooted in observable process-level scales, the variations of surface soil moisture, evapotranspiration, PBL states, PBL top entrainment, near-surface atmospheric thermal conditions, precipitation and/or clouds resulting from surface changes have been investigated through energy budget analysis and/or state covariations to evaluate various typical surface advantages and/or deficits, e.g., morning PBL moistening or deepening [
17,
18], locally and non locally physical items resulted into PBL top humidity changes [
19,
20], diagnostic states regarding well-mixed turbulence [
21,
22,
23], surface and atmospheric flux contributions under surface thermal and moisture coevolution space [
24], atmospheric state responses to SM [
25,
26,
27], the persistence of SM anomalies [
28], and so on. And these quite different measurements have been organized into one overall LoCo process chain, and further collected into the Coupling Metrics Toolkit (
www.coupling-metrics.com), in order to foster grassroots participation [
29].
LoCo metrics have been applied for regional evaluation of both models and datasets recently, regarding the coupling characteristics of their observational physics or statistics [
31,
32,
33]. However, their performances are likely semi-coupling and require point samples of long-time series. Meanwhile, the uniformly scaled metrics of fixed space could be challenging because of insufficient PBL observations and/or coupling theory deficits (e.g., the varied scale dependence) [
6,
7,
8,
24]. While different from that, ensemble simulations within perturbed SM can achieve the overall relation chains (e.g., correlations) within regional studies [
34,
35], but usually non-observational and qualitative (e.g., negative and/or positive). Therefore, these various coupling indicators have been limited for broader applications by scale dependence and observational sample deficits.
In general, the local couplings indicated by observation-based metrics and ensemble statistical correlations lack of mutual confirmation mainly due to the unsolved spatiotemporal scale issues. Especially, the coupling characteristics indicated by ensemble statistical correlations lack verification of their reliability. To fill this gap, this study has evaluated the LoCo characteristics of the recent extreme rainstorm occurs on 20 July 2021 over central east China [
36,
37] on the resolved model grids by using various LoCo metrics and ensemble statistical relations, intending to highlight the potential perspectives of LoCo metrics on the local weather application.
2. Model and Data
This study has taken the Unified Noah Land Surface Model (Noah LSM) [
38] coupled with the advanced weather research and forecasting model (WRF, Version 3.9.1) [
39] to conduct the land-atmosphere coupling simulation of the typical rainstorm on 20 July 2021. The Noah LSM can run on finer temporal and spatial steps, and it has been widely used in numerical weather prediction and well-verified in local coupling studies [
24,
30,
31,
32].
As seen in
Figure 1, two domains (e.g., D01 and D02) are one-way nested and centered at 113.45
oE,33.85
oN with 51 model levels topped at 50 hPa and run within a 60-second time step. The outer and inner domain resolutions are 12 and 4 Km with 100×100 and 165×159 grids respectively. During both domains, the microphysics chose the Thompson scheme [
40], the short and long wave physics chose the RRTMG schemes [
41], the cumulus parameterization physics chose the Kain-Fritsch scheme [
42], and the surface layer physics chose the Revised MM5 scheme [
43]. Especially, the Yonsei University PBL scheme (YSU) has adopted a non-local entrainment treatment method more suitable for nocturnal PBL within lower heights [
44]. The lower 21 levels below 1 Km are conducted to achieve finer PBL profiles within YSU physics.
The atmospheric forcing datasets are collected from the first generation global atmospheric/land-surface reanalysis project (CRA40, 1978-2018), which has a resolution of 34 Km, 64 pressure levels, and 6 and 3 hours intervals for the atmospheric and surface layer respectively [
45,
46]. Also, the Noah LSM driven by the Global Land Data Assimilation System reanalysis (GLDAS) has a resolution of 0.25
o, 3-hour intervals, and 4 layers [
47]. In addition, the 3 s terrain derived from the United State Geological Survey (USGS) and the 15 s land cover derived from the Moderate resolution Imaging Spectro radiometer (MODIS) product have been taken as the static underlying datasets.
The observations used in this study mainly include the automatic weather stations (AWS), nine S-band Doppler weather radars, and two soundings (
Figure 1) derived from CMA Henan Meteorological Bureau. The AWS has a resolution of around 0.1
o and 1-hour interval and each radar are observed at a resolution of around 250 m, 11 elevation numbers, and 6-minute interval. The sounding sites Zhengzhou (ZZ) and Nanyang (NY) are taken as the two typical points of this domain to investigate the rainstorm-affected typical factors and non-typical factors respectively. Also, the grid precipitation product of the Land Surface Data Assimilation System (CLDAS) grid precipitation product of CMA, which has a resolution of 0.1
o×0.1
o and 1 hour [
48] during the local operational application, is collected to fulfill the accumulative rainfall validation. Noted that the local hourly CLDAS rainfall products are used for calculating the longer time series accumulated precipitation (e.g., 12 hour rainfall) in order to avoid the discontinuity in AWS observations at different times. Also, the AWS datasets are supplied alongside to ensure the objectivity of instantaneous observations.
7. Discussion
Wet Soil Advantage (WSA) on the east and Atmospherically Controlled Advantage (ACA) of other regions have dominated the convection triggering potential, this indicates the dominant surface overall deficits and moistening advantage in the morning [
17,
18]. Both strong moisture evaporation and atmospheric interference (e.g., great daytime SE and NE in RHT) before noon have enhanced the noontime buoyant mixing (e.g., lower daytime
in HCF), which indicates the favorable shallow clouds development surrounding the SRC region [
19,
20]. However, great entrainment latent fluxes (e.g., large daytime
in MDT) that are mostly pronounced over the main rainstorm areas (
Figure 14b) and likely controlled by the upper flows have taken over the cloud developing in the early afternoon [
21,
22,
23,
24]. The greatly developed upper systems have resulted in the huge energy transformation of the whole east domain during the late afternoon (e.g., increase
in HCF when the extreme rainfall ends) [
21,
22,
23]. Moreover, the significant TCP between noontime and afternoon has also emphasized the significance of soil-surface coupling during the rainstorm surrounding areas. However, SMM increases with rainfall develops and it is likely matched with TCP in the late afternoon period. In addition, the relation intensity for DP is greater than that for WP should be due to the initial wet soil surface, and the consistent point-wised relation chains interfaced by moist static energy or PBL height for both WP and DP indicate the overall dominant role of strong atmospheric forcing.
For real-world applications, the daytime HCF diagnoses have shown to be the reliable indicators for incoming rainfall or convection of a specific site (e.g.,
for ZZ and NY sites), and point scale weather service could possibly benefit from this; also, the point wised CHF and other metric diagnoses within various advantages can be directly referenced to for local convection initiation decisions, while the ensemble statistic relations and nighttime LoCo diagnose should be further studied. In addition, the radar [
50,
51] and satellite [
52,
53,
54,
55,
56,
57,
58,
59,
60] studies within PBL layers but not completely observed could benefit from the LoCo metrics for the possibly comprehensive data or method evaluation.
Overall, the abundant evaporation of wet surfaces is heavily suppressed during the main rainstorm periods. Though the LoCo metrics qualify various local factors by using point wised simulation profiles under resolved model grid (4 Km) during this study, the actual land-atmosphere interaction in nature occurs on much smaller scales, e.g., the land surface feature sizes and the atmospheric turbulence scales, and the nonlinear systems over a single surface may respond quite differently among different regions, also, the spatiotemporal characteristics of paired states in both DP and WP have exhibited significantly regional differences (chaotic distributions), which should be possibly induced by external factors (e.g., human activities) [
37,
50]. And more investigation on local coupling among different regions should be carried out in the future to enhance the LoCo insights on typically varied underlying characteristics.
Figure 1.
Domains and observations. Topography height larger than 500 m (blue contours), GLDAS surface soil moisture (shaded) at 00:00 on 20 July, locations of AWS observations (black solid points), soundings (red solid points), radars (blue circles), and model domains (black boxes).
Figure 1.
Domains and observations. Topography height larger than 500 m (blue contours), GLDAS surface soil moisture (shaded) at 00:00 on 20 July, locations of AWS observations (black solid points), soundings (red solid points), radars (blue circles), and model domains (black boxes).
Figure 2.
Flowchart of this study. CC=correlated coefficients.
Figure 2.
Flowchart of this study. CC=correlated coefficients.
Figure 3.
Synoptic overview at 00:00 on 20 July. (a)~(c) show the geopotential height (black lines; units: gpm), temperature (red dashed lines; units: oC), and winds (blue vectors; units: m/s) for 500, 700, and 850 hPa levels respectively. (d) show the seal level pressure (black lines; units: hPa), temperature (red dashed lines; units: oC), and winds (blue vectors; units: m/s) for the surface layer. H = High, L=Low, C=Cold, W=Warm.
Figure 3.
Synoptic overview at 00:00 on 20 July. (a)~(c) show the geopotential height (black lines; units: gpm), temperature (red dashed lines; units: oC), and winds (blue vectors; units: m/s) for 500, 700, and 850 hPa levels respectively. (d) show the seal level pressure (black lines; units: hPa), temperature (red dashed lines; units: oC), and winds (blue vectors; units: m/s) for the surface layer. H = High, L=Low, C=Cold, W=Warm.
Figure 4.
Observed and simulated soundings. (a) and (b) show the T-logP plots at 00 and 12 on 20 July respectively for the ZZ site. During (a) and (b), the thick solid and dashed lines represent for the observation and simulation respectively, the thick red and blue lines represent for temperature (units: oC) and dew point (units: oC) respectively, the green and black wind barbs on the right hand represent for the observed and simulated wind profiles respectively. (c) and (d) are the same as (a) and (b), but for NY site.
Figure 4.
Observed and simulated soundings. (a) and (b) show the T-logP plots at 00 and 12 on 20 July respectively for the ZZ site. During (a) and (b), the thick solid and dashed lines represent for the observation and simulation respectively, the thick red and blue lines represent for temperature (units: oC) and dew point (units: oC) respectively, the green and black wind barbs on the right hand represent for the observed and simulated wind profiles respectively. (c) and (d) are the same as (a) and (b), but for NY site.
Figure 5.
Simulated and observed convection comparison. (a) the domain averaged 3-hour interval composite reflectivity (CR) against time, (b) the frequency of the 3-hour interval CR that exceeds 10 dBZ averaged over the whole simulation period. (c) the spatially correlated coefficients () and root mean square errors (RMSE) of CR over the simulated period. (d) the temporally correlated coefficients () of CR over the daytime (00:00~12:00) on 20 July 2021.
Figure 5.
Simulated and observed convection comparison. (a) the domain averaged 3-hour interval composite reflectivity (CR) against time, (b) the frequency of the 3-hour interval CR that exceeds 10 dBZ averaged over the whole simulation period. (c) the spatially correlated coefficients () and root mean square errors (RMSE) of CR over the simulated period. (d) the temporally correlated coefficients () of CR over the daytime (00:00~12:00) on 20 July 2021.
Figure 6.
Simulated and observed rainfall comparison. (a) the domain averaged 3-hour rainfall against time, (b) the frequency distribution of the 3-hour rainfall () that exceeds 10 mm averaged over the whole simulation period. (c) and (d) represent the 12-hour accumulated precipitation (shaded, units: mm) during the daytime (00~12) on 20 July for CLDAS observation and simulation respectively, also the spatial correlation coefficient () is shown.
Figure 6.
Simulated and observed rainfall comparison. (a) the domain averaged 3-hour rainfall against time, (b) the frequency distribution of the 3-hour rainfall () that exceeds 10 mm averaged over the whole simulation period. (c) and (d) represent the 12-hour accumulated precipitation (shaded, units: mm) during the daytime (00~12) on 20 July for CLDAS observation and simulation respectively, also the spatial correlation coefficient () is shown.
Figure 7.
Simulated and observed surface comparison. (a) the domain averaged 3-hour surface temperature against time, (b) the frequency distribution of the 3-hour surface temperature averaged over the whole simulation period. (c) the spatially correlated coefficients () and root mean square errors (RMSE) of surface temperature over the simulated period. (d) the temporally correlated coefficients () of surface temperature during the daytime on 20 July 2021, also the significant level that less than 0.05 (p<0.05; dotted) is shown.
Figure 7.
Simulated and observed surface comparison. (a) the domain averaged 3-hour surface temperature against time, (b) the frequency distribution of the 3-hour surface temperature averaged over the whole simulation period. (c) the spatially correlated coefficients () and root mean square errors (RMSE) of surface temperature over the simulated period. (d) the temporally correlated coefficients () of surface temperature during the daytime on 20 July 2021, also the significant level that less than 0.05 (p<0.05; dotted) is shown.
Figure 8.
The conventional trigger potential analysis at 00:00 on 20 July. (a) is the scattered plots for all grids in CHF for describing atmospheric controls on soil moisture-rainfall feedback, and (b) is the representative regions within D02 domain, based on CHF scatter plots for all grids. During (a) and (b), ACA, WSA, DSA, and TR regions have been plotted into solid, dashed, dash-dotted, and dotted lines respectively. ACA=atmospherically controlled advantage, WSA=wet soil advantage, DSA=dry soil advantage, TR=trans region, SRC=stable region when atmospherically controlled, SRD= stable region when too dry for rainfall.
Figure 8.
The conventional trigger potential analysis at 00:00 on 20 July. (a) is the scattered plots for all grids in CHF for describing atmospheric controls on soil moisture-rainfall feedback, and (b) is the representative regions within D02 domain, based on CHF scatter plots for all grids. During (a) and (b), ACA, WSA, DSA, and TR regions have been plotted into solid, dashed, dash-dotted, and dotted lines respectively. ACA=atmospherically controlled advantage, WSA=wet soil advantage, DSA=dry soil advantage, TR=trans region, SRC=stable region when atmospherically controlled, SRD= stable region when too dry for rainfall.
Figure 9.
The relative humidity tendency framework. Daily evolution of the boundary layer height and relative humidity at the boundary layer top for (a) ZZ site and (b) NY site respectively. And the four relative humidity tendency terms such as surface evaporation (SE, dashed line; unit: 1), boundary layer growth (BLG, circle; unit: %/3hr), boundary layer warming (BLW, asterisk; unit: %/3hr), dry air entrainment (DE, diamond; unit: %/3hr), and total relative humidity tendency (RHT, cross; unit: %/3hr) for (c) ZZ site and (d) NY site respectively.
Figure 9.
The relative humidity tendency framework. Daily evolution of the boundary layer height and relative humidity at the boundary layer top for (a) ZZ site and (b) NY site respectively. And the four relative humidity tendency terms such as surface evaporation (SE, dashed line; unit: 1), boundary layer growth (BLG, circle; unit: %/3hr), boundary layer warming (BLW, asterisk; unit: %/3hr), dry air entrainment (DE, diamond; unit: %/3hr), and total relative humidity tendency (RHT, cross; unit: %/3hr) for (c) ZZ site and (d) NY site respectively.
Figure 10.
Frequency distribution (a) of spatially averaged RHT terms and non-evaporative term (NE) over daytime on 20 July 2021. (b) is the spatial distribution of temporally averaged terms.
Figure 10.
Frequency distribution (a) of spatially averaged RHT terms and non-evaporative term (NE) over daytime on 20 July 2021. (b) is the spatial distribution of temporally averaged terms.
Figure 11.
The heat condensation framework. (a) and (b) represent for comparison between the buoyant mixing potential temperature (, black line; units: K) and 2m temperature (, green line; units: K) during the whole simulation period for the ZZ and NY sites respectively. Precipitation (green bars; units: mm) is binned by 3-hr accumulations, black bars represent the cloud water (QCloud; units: 0.1 g/Kg). (c) represents for the domain averaged HCF diagnoses such as , , and , against time, (d) represents for the domain averaged HCF diagnoses such as , , (bubble shaded) and (bubble size), against time.
Figure 11.
The heat condensation framework. (a) and (b) represent for comparison between the buoyant mixing potential temperature (, black line; units: K) and 2m temperature (, green line; units: K) during the whole simulation period for the ZZ and NY sites respectively. Precipitation (green bars; units: mm) is binned by 3-hr accumulations, black bars represent the cloud water (QCloud; units: 0.1 g/Kg). (c) represents for the domain averaged HCF diagnoses such as , , and , against time, (d) represents for the domain averaged HCF diagnoses such as , , (bubble shaded) and (bubble size), against time.
Figure 12.
Frequency distribution (a) of mean HCF diagnoses such as , and , during local daytime on 20 July 2021. (b) is the same as (a) but for spatial distribution of temporally averaged over local daytime.
Figure 12.
Frequency distribution (a) of mean HCF diagnoses such as , and , during local daytime on 20 July 2021. (b) is the same as (a) but for spatial distribution of temporally averaged over local daytime.
Figure 13.
The mixing diagram framework. (a) represents for the daytime coevolution (00:00-09:00) of and on 20 July 2021 for ZZ (red lines) and NY (blue lines). Also shown are vectors( and ; dashed lines), slopes ( and ), and energy budget components. (b) is the same as (a) but for the nighttime coevolution (12:00-21:00). (c) represents for the relationship between and clouds for daytime (red scattered), nighttime (blue scattered), and daily (black scattered). (d) is the same as (c) but represents for the relationship between and clouds. (e) represents for the relationship of daily EF to maximum PBL height for all grid points over the whole simulation period. Also shown are intermediate, and wet soil locations (dashed circles).
Figure 13.
The mixing diagram framework. (a) represents for the daytime coevolution (00:00-09:00) of and on 20 July 2021 for ZZ (red lines) and NY (blue lines). Also shown are vectors( and ; dashed lines), slopes ( and ), and energy budget components. (b) is the same as (a) but for the nighttime coevolution (12:00-21:00). (c) represents for the relationship between and clouds for daytime (red scattered), nighttime (blue scattered), and daily (black scattered). (d) is the same as (c) but represents for the relationship between and clouds. (e) represents for the relationship of daily EF to maximum PBL height for all grid points over the whole simulation period. Also shown are intermediate, and wet soil locations (dashed circles).
Figure 14.
Frequency distribution (a) of mean soil moisture at 0-10 cm and the PBL energy budgets of MDT during the daytime on 20 July 2021. (b) is the same as (a) but for spatial distribution.
Figure 14.
Frequency distribution (a) of mean soil moisture at 0-10 cm and the PBL energy budgets of MDT during the daytime on 20 July 2021. (b) is the same as (a) but for spatial distribution.
Figure 15.
(a) Frequency and spatial distribution of TCP3H (units: W/m2) on 20 July 2021 for latent heat flux. (b) is the same as (a) but for the sensible heat flux.
Figure 15.
(a) Frequency and spatial distribution of TCP3H (units: W/m2) on 20 July 2021 for latent heat flux. (b) is the same as (a) but for the sensible heat flux.
Figure 16.
Frequency and spatial distribution of SMM3H on 20 July 2021 for surface soil layer.
Figure 16.
Frequency and spatial distribution of SMM3H on 20 July 2021 for surface soil layer.
Figure 17.
(a) heat maps of surface flux slope (), surface temperature and water vapor ( and ), 30m temperature and water vapor ( and ), 500m moist static energy () and PBL height(), temperature and water vapor at the height averaged between 0 and 1.5Km ( and ), and 3-hour rainfall () for DP. (b)The collaborative variations of the domain averaged paired factors whose absolute is large than 0.5 during LoCo chains for DP. The significance level p is also shown. (c) and (d) are the same as (a) and (b), but for WP.
Figure 17.
(a) heat maps of surface flux slope (), surface temperature and water vapor ( and ), 30m temperature and water vapor ( and ), 500m moist static energy () and PBL height(), temperature and water vapor at the height averaged between 0 and 1.5Km ( and ), and 3-hour rainfall () for DP. (b)The collaborative variations of the domain averaged paired factors whose absolute is large than 0.5 during LoCo chains for DP. The significance level p is also shown. (c) and (d) are the same as (a) and (b), but for WP.
Figure 18.
The frequency (histogram fit), and spatially distributed (shaded) and its significance p (dotted) of different paired variables over the simulation period for DP. The relations between surface flux slope (), 500m moist static energy(), PBL height(), and 3-hour rainfall () are shown.
Figure 18.
The frequency (histogram fit), and spatially distributed (shaded) and its significance p (dotted) of different paired variables over the simulation period for DP. The relations between surface flux slope (), 500m moist static energy(), PBL height(), and 3-hour rainfall () are shown.
Table 1.
Description of the LoCo metrics.
Table 1.
Description of the LoCo metrics.